January 8, 2020 • 40 mins
Big Ben tells you why he likes the Matt Rhule hire by the Carolina Panthers, how Anthony Davis rejecting the max extension offer from the Lakers can backfire and Ben offers his solution for sign stealing in baseball after allegations surface against the Red Sox.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of the Ben Mallers
Show podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight
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(00:23):
This is the best of the Ben Maller Show on
Fox Sports Radio. So we have the NFL coaching carousel,
which I believe right now is spinning out of control.
Two more vacancies have been filled. We'll focus for the
purposes of this Maller monologue on the one in the
Tar Hills State. And I assume you saw it happened
(00:45):
early in the day. Maybe you missed it. The Carolina
Panthers have hired who Yeah, if you were in another
dimension and you've been out of the loop, Matt Rule,
he rules the day. He's a new Matt Rule. He's
a coach of Baylor, and he also he also in
(01:09):
accomplishing a couple of things. He became an NFL coach,
and he also remade a Hollywood classic, The Great Train
Robbery by Matt Rule, who has no NFL head coaching
experience but very briefly was a assistant position coach in
the NFL, and he gets a reported seven year contract
worth sixty million, which with incentives, could be worth up
(01:33):
to seventy million dollars. Holy bo Jangles, Batman, what is
up with that? Anyway? Let's discuss the question, how should
Carolina Panther supporters, all of them listening to us in
Charlotte right now, how should you feel and all over
the Carolina's feel about Matt Rule as your coach. Now,
(01:54):
I've got risky business, characters and pie and we will
buying all these things together. Now. Number one, I find
I believe the word is interesting. Now. We were asked
the other day in Mallard of the third degree whether
or not Matt Rule would return to Baylor for another season,
(02:15):
and at that time we said, absolutely, he's not going
to the NFL. He's gonna do these interviews, but these
are not great jobs. They're not. And part of that
was because he had a massive buyout and the Panther's
job is at best average, is not a plum job
in the NFL. Well, it turns out that it became
(02:37):
a plum job because the hedge fund guy that owns
the Panthers, that Weasley Wall Street guy, David Temper, what
David Temper wants as the owner, who David Temper gets.
That's the reality. Now, it does help to be worth
twelve billion dollars. That is his said net worth. Think
(03:01):
about that, twelve billion, not million. Twelve billion, which means
means you're living in a nice part of town and
you have cash to burn. You have cash to burn,
kind of like writing a check for six million dollars,
which is what the Carolina Panthers have done. They wrote
a check for six million dollars to Baylor and said,
here go out. I think you can buy half of Waco,
(03:23):
Texas for six million dollars. But that is what they
got as a compensation situation. Hey, it's only money, chump change.
In fact, when you're worth twelve billion dollars, it is
a massive gamble. Though typically you'd say for both sides,
but on this one, it's a big gamble for Carolina.
It's the old risk Rewar right Matt rule. For him. Hey,
(03:44):
he was the hot name. You only get to be
the hot name one time. Very rarely do you be.
I mean he almost like, once in a blue moon,
are you a the hot guy for more than one time?
And he picked up panthers. Not a great job. It
became a great job when the dollar amount was thrown around.
(04:04):
How do you make an average job a great job? Overpay,
any job becomes a better Whatever you're doing right now,
a lot of people listening live work and even the
podcast you're working while you're doing this, and you might
not like your job. I hear from people all the time, Matt,
I don't really like it. I gotta do it. I
got you know, I get a zillion kids, I got bills,
(04:25):
I got a you know, a whole thing. I get
emails from people all the time. They spilled their guts.
And here's the thing. That same job you're doing right now,
if they tripled your salary, would not be such a
bad job. You'd be like, that's a pretty good job.
I like this job. I can embrace this job. The
hours might be tough, but so what anyway. So that's
the thing for Rule. If you're talking about a seven
(04:46):
year contract. You know that old saying strike while the
iron's hot, Well, Matt, Rule struck while the iron was hot.
And even if he does a face plan and sucks
at a time you should not, you know, suck, coaching
in the NFL care line will pretty much be married
to him and connected at the hip for at least
four years plus. If he fails, and most of these
(05:09):
coaches fail, he can go back to college Matt rule
and his tail between his legs and his bank account
filled with money. It is risky business for David Tepper
because he is putting his neck out there on what
is a wild card, and it could be a joker,
it could be an ace. Right, there are justifiable red flags.
(05:30):
This is a guy who's claimed to fame is the
resurrection of woebegone schools like Temple and Baylor from sin
to salvation. Right now, news flash, you're not in Waco,
Texas anymore. Right, you're not in Waco, Texas anymore. So.
The NFL is whole different animal, not Charlotte. It's not
(05:51):
a massive media center and all that. But every NFL
town they have their lapdog media. Probably, Oh, I guess
Buffalo's got the biggest lapdog media. I heard from my
friends Sports with Coleman this week. But but every town
has some guys that are critics, and by the way,
we have our made for TV moment one of them.
In the NFL twenty twenty, we don't have the schedule out,
(06:12):
but we know the matchups and Matt Rule and the
Carolina Panthers will play his predecessor, Ron Rivera and the
Washington Redskins in Land over Maryland. So that'll be I
think Monday night Thursday night games something like that, some
primetime festivities. Now. Secondly, Carolina, they certainly regressed under Ron Rivera,
(06:35):
the aforementioned Ron Rivera, things had become stale. So from
the standpoint of change, pretty much anybody would be good.
Ron Rivera, let's just say the roster. Now, he wasn't
fully involved in building the roster, but he had a
roll in it. He the roster that Rivera left. The
cupboard is bare in many areas. Now they have Christian
(06:56):
McCaffrey on offense, and they've got Louke Keickley the line
backer on defense. But outside of that there's a hodgepodge
of non descript players. I don't see very many playmakers,
if any other than Christian McCaffrey regularly performing there. And now, personally,
I like the Matt Rule hire for Caroline ain't my money.
(07:18):
And I like the excitement. I mean, I would say,
of the hires that we've had in the NFL, this
one is right there at the top of the list.
And he could fail, and it's still at the top
of this We're all playing the speculation game. You're all gambling,
all of us that this is gonna work out. And
(07:39):
I don't know too much about him. I saw some games.
I don't see him when he's coaching Temple, but at Baylor,
And how could you not be impressed with a turnaround
of Baylor? In fact? How good has this guy? Ben?
He's critically acclaimed. This past year, the Baylor Bears became
the fourth team, but the first Power Five team since
nineteen thirty seven to win eleven games two years after
(08:02):
losing eleven games. That is a dramatical turnaround situation. And
I also liked the backstory, which gets shoved up your
nose in times like this, Like the path he took
coach and playing football, Matt Rule included some very interesting
(08:22):
and infamous football characters who were his mentors, and now
he's an NFL coach. Matt Rule was a walk on
at Penn's State and guess who the coach was, Joe Paterno.
But he also played defense, and his defensive coordinator in
State College was the notorious pervert Jerry Sandusky. That's right,
(08:47):
the guy who was molesting little boys. Jerry Sandusky was
his defensive coordinator and the new coach of the Carolina Panthers.
Matt Rule's father worked for Jerry Sandusky's charity in State College.
I assume they did not put that in the press release.
Now that doesn't mean anything at all. It just you
people work with people, and sometimes you don't know the
(09:10):
real story on people. And they've got two sides and
all that. I get it. But it's interesting. Are these
are interesting names? Now? The final point, if you do
the old winners and losers thing, we don't have a
winner yet. Because of all I like to hire because
it's exciting, it's new, it's fresh, and all that. We
do have a loser. That would be the New York
Football Giants. All right. This is a big blow to
(09:32):
Big Blue because Matt Rule grew up in New York
before he moved to Pennsylvania as a teenager. He was
an offensive line coach assistant offensive line coach for the
Giants on the Tom Coughlin. It was all lined up.
All the anecdotal evidence led you to believe that he
was going to be the next coach of the Giants.
The media in New York were convinced of it. Instead,
(09:55):
he decided not to even talk with him and take
the money and run with Caroline. I don't blame him.
Giants aren't going to pay that kind of money. How
about low self esteem for Dave Gettlman and the Giants
eating humble Pie and boone appetite and all that. Now
they were backed into a corner. They ended up hiring
Joe Judge, the Special Team's coach or the Patriots. More
(10:18):
on that later. So Matt Rule, Joe Judge is the
guy's name. So Matt Rule immediately becomes one of the
highest pay coaches in the NFL. Right rags to riches,
the whole deal. He moves into the high rent district.
As the thinking goes, he is I believe richer now
than Scrooge McDuck. I believe he is richer than Scrooge McDuck.
(10:40):
And he's also in the running for the worst dress
coach in the NFL. Now, Bill Belichick and Andy Reid
kind of go back and forth on that. But I
don't know if you've you watched him at Baylor. One
of the few things I remember, that's how odd how
I remember these weird things watching Baylor a few times
over the last couple of years, that Matt Rule dresses
like he's doing overnight talk radio. You know, we do
(11:02):
the overnight show here, so there's no one in the building.
Management's not around. They don't even clean the toilets while
we're here. There's nobody in the building, so we can
pretty much wear our pajamas if we wanted to. No,
I dress her success. I'm wearing a tuxedo right now.
But these other guys are dressed like clowns. I want
you to know that. But Mad Rules seems like a
meat and potatoes kind of guy that's not worried about
(11:23):
strutting down the catwalk. Now, he's no fashion east considering
some of the crap that he's worn. But you know,
who am I to speak? Who? Well, I'm a talk
sture host. I get paid to speak. That's how that works.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven PM Pacific. There
is no joy in Mudville or lebron Land Brownie, that's
(11:45):
his kid, actually Lebron the old man. As the world turns.
The Lakers put a beat down on the Knickerbockers. But
that's not the story. The story is a boo boo
for Anthony Davis. Who could have possibly anticipated that Anthony
(12:05):
Davis would get hurt. It's so unlike him. He's an
iron man. When you think tough, you think Anthony Davis.
Next man up. That's the attitude, next man up mentality.
Ha ha. This DeMarcus cousin is gonna come back and
(12:29):
place hurt. He's out for the year, right, and he's
gonna come back and save the day for the Lakers. Well,
if you missed it, now, there's two things about Anthony
Davis that we need to talk about. He left the
game in the third quarter last night or tonight, depending
on how you look at it. It is the middle
of the night so or early in the morning now,
so it was last night Laker Nick's game, blowout game,
(12:51):
third quarter. And oh a collision between Anthony Davis and
former Aco Julius Randall. Ironically, they were like united as
one there for a little while, but they got together.
Now Anthony Davis left the game. He walked off under
(13:13):
his own power. The Lakers owner, general manager, President of
basketball Operations, Rich Paul Lebron's toady and also the agent
for it's all. It's you know, it's everyone's in bed
with everyone here in the Laker Land. But to Anthony
Davis's agent came over and it wasn't some pr person,
(13:34):
it was Rich Paul himself that said, there's nothing to
see here. Everything is fine, is essentially what he said.
It's like that famous, famous scene in one of the
great movies of all time from back in the day,
Leslie Nielsen and the Naked Gun, the late Leslie Nielsen,
(13:56):
when he's standing there and he says, you know, there's
he He's actually had two lines in movies that are
the Naked Gun. He was standing in front of like
a building with fireworks going off and all this because
and he said, move on, there's nothing to see here,
please disperse. And another old movie that has been many
years ago, but airplane. Remember remember the line Leslie Nielsen
(14:18):
had an airplane. He said, there's no reason to become alarmed,
and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight.
By the way, is there anyone on board who knows
how to fly a plane? Solid line, solid comedy, gold
in the movies. But so Rich Paul's like, oh, there's
nothing to see here, don't worry about it. He'll be fine.
(14:39):
That's he says that out of one side of his mouth.
Then it comes out that not only is Anthony Davis injured,
he's gonna miss the upcoming road trip for the Lakers.
So he's out for the roadie. He will not play
in those games. And but wait, there's more. He's gonna
have an MRI on his lower back. Inquiring minds would
(15:03):
like to know how this is gonna go. I'd be
surprised if we see him again before February, knowing his
injury record. And then you have the future of Anthony Davis.
I don't know if you've heard the latest on that.
No bad job you. We're gonna get to that in
a minute. Let's you're from Frank Vogel, though, who tried
(15:25):
to help tow the company line here the la he's
not really the Lakers coach. He's Lebron's assistant, the lead
assistant for the Lakers. Frank Vogel commenting on the injury
to Anthony Davis a tailbone injury in this while diagnosis
of bruce tailbone and he's gonna go through additional testing
tonight and we'll have an update for you tomorrow. It's
all I got. That's it. I want more, I need more. No,
(15:50):
apparently that's always gone. So as far as the contract, though,
the Lakers offered Anthony Davis a four year, one hundred
forty six million dollars extension that happened on Tuesday, was
reported on Tuesday, and the Lakers were handed by Anthony
Davis this is great a rejection letter hours before he
(16:10):
went out and mutilated his tailbone. He turned down one
hundred and forty six million dollars and then immediately got hurt. Immediately,
don't even pass go you have picked up a tailbone injury.
Davis is bypassing the end season extension and he would
like to become an unrestricted free agent in July. Now,
(16:33):
there's several schools of thought on this, so I thought
we would take a spin and figure out what's really
going on the question how nervous should the Lakers be
about Anthony Davis leaving he just turned down one hundred
and forty six million dollars. I am going to pull
out the Mallard scale of anxiety, and on the Mallard
(16:54):
scale of anxiety one to ten, with ten being you're
staring down the barrel of a flamethrower. I'm out a night.
I am at a crazy eight. I know the guys
in the other room there, the Laker apologists don't want
to hear that, but I'm at an eight. All right.
I've got superficial, deep dish and collateral damage, and we'll
(17:16):
put all these things together. Not to lead off with
Anthony Davis has been, for the most part, a good soldier.
He is saying and doing just about all the right things.
Per media reports, he appears to be bff with Lebron James.
They're hanging out together, smoking cigars, They're having Taco Tuesday together.
Oh my god, they're having so much fun. Every day
(17:38):
is a trip to Disneyland with these two knuckleheads side
by side. And Anthony Davis on the court has been
very productive. The team is winning. He seems genuinely happy
to play for the Lakers, YadA, YadA, YadA. However, much
like the Laker franchise motto. It's all superficial. You have
(18:00):
to take this stuff at face value. It is irrelevant. Now,
what is my evidence? Example A Kawhi Leonard and Uncle Dennis.
That is example A. Remember Kawhi was laughing and having
a good time winning in Toronto and the Raptors, thanks
(18:21):
to the Warriors crumbling, won the NBA championship. Kawhi Leonard
seemed genuinely happy. He was more popular than the Prime
Minister of Canada. They were giving him deals. He was
hanging out making TV commercials and big deal, big deal
in Toronto and all over Cannon. At first, you always
(18:44):
remember your first that first championship for the Raptors franchise.
And so why would he leave? But boardman rejected max
offers from the Toronto Raptors. He exited stage right in
free agency. Now, furthermore, Anthony Davis, he has a similar
circumstance around him. Now. The only difference here, and it's
a mildly big difference, is that he wanted to play
(19:06):
for the Lakers, and this is where he chose to
escape from New Orleans. Kawhi didn't pick Toronto. He ended
up in Toronto. However, Laker historians ought to be skittish
and nervous because while Kawhi Leonard chose to play for
his hometown team, it's hip to clip, you know, the
(19:28):
hometown team for Anthony Davis, the running of the Bulls.
That's right, the Chicago Bulls, the Unit brow a native
son of Chicago. The Bulls have been a slow motion
train wreck for years, and I feel bad for my
friend Chuck Swirsky, the voice of the Chicago Bulls there
(19:49):
who's had to call some terrible Bulls teams over the
recent years there, radio voice of the Bulls. You're a
schmuck if you don't know who Chuck Sworsky's. He created
the nickname Eric Canada and Vinceanity when he was the
voice of the Toronto Raptors back in the day. Very
very nice man, very talented man, the great Chuck Sworsky.
But anyway, I digress. So Chicago like the Bulls because
(20:11):
they've been so bad. You imagine Davis could just be
the perfect tonic, just what the doctor ordered, right walks
back into the Windy City. He'd be bigger than Deep
Dish Pizza in Chicago if he were to do that,
as the guy that would fix the Bulls. And you
know his friends from back home in Chicago, if he
(20:33):
has any of them left from the second city, there
have to be planting the scene in his ear like, hey,
come on, maby, we need you. You'd be the savior,
the messiah of the Chicago Bulls franchise. Anthony Davis. Now
on a positive note for the Laker Lapdogs. Rich Paul,
who we referenced earlier the de facto owner of the
(20:55):
Lakers and general manager and president, and also Anthony Davis
is agent. He is the one who, in theory, is
orchestrating the very future of the unit. Brow or, as
our friend the Palm Desert Rat said, instead of the brow,
it's just the owl. That's it. I'm gonna have to use.
That's a good line. I'm gonna steal that eventually. I
(21:15):
will not give you credit, Palm Desert Rat. I'll just
use that as my own. I learned that from Tom Looney,
who I used to work with here, because I would
say something the first hour of a show. We did
the blitz and it was like like six or seven
hours whatever it was, and so I'd say something kind
of witty that worked the first hour, and then three
hours later, he Looney would use the same line, and
(21:38):
then he would turn his mic off and laugh at
me and point his finger at me like a child.
So I will do the same thing with the palm,
does it rat? I will say, he's not the brow,
He's the owl. And then I will just laugh and
I will turn my mic off and goof on the
palm desert. Right, That's what I'm gonna do. Let you
know right now. But Rich Paul, you're the Rich Paul
dynamic is the orchestrator of the future of Anthony Davis.
(22:03):
Imagine Paul and Lebron James. I would think are putting
a full court press on Davis, hoping to hypnotize him,
to brainwash him with Laker propaganda, mine control. And we
know Anthony Davis. You know he's a good basketball player.
But he didn't even dress himself. I mean, it's all embarrassing.
I remember the whole New Orleans thing. He wore the
(22:24):
T shirt the last game in New Orleans where didn't
even play that said that's all folks, and then when
asked about it, so I didn't even know. I don't
dress myself. You know. It's like his mom puts his clothes,
not even his mom. It's said one of his handlers
puts the clothes on the bed for him to wear
in the morning. Imagine that. I mean, at some point,
don't you I pick out my own clothes. I look great.
By the way, thank you. Thanks for her nosing all
(22:45):
right now, the last thing here, so reports say Anthony Davis.
The reason he rejected the Lakers max offer is to
get more money by waiting until the summer. And the
way the salaries work this well, I can get two
hundred million if you ways, it gets one hundred and
forty six million. Now it's an extra couple of million
a year. Not so fast though. All right, there's a curveball,
(23:08):
a backdoor curveball, which, by the way, Los Angeles Dodger
hitters do not know how to react to in the postseason,
but they're fine during the regime. Anyway, Sorry, I'm having flashbacks,
but a reality check, Anthony Davis could actually end up
costing himself money. There's two ways this can go sideways
and upside down and topsy turvy for Anthony Davis. And
(23:33):
the first way is the salary cap, which has gone up, up,
up and away for years keeps getting higher every year,
revenues get better. The party bus is about to run
out of gas. A long time NBA employee told me
on Christmas night, I was the Laker Clipper game and
(23:54):
was it the chickern press room or whatever hell it is,
and he sat with me, he talked to me, told
me that it is going to be a very ugly
offseason in the NBA and there's going to be a
market correction in terms of revenue. Now, why is it
that is collateral damage from the NBA doing the dirty
(24:18):
dance with the People's Republic of China and the fallout
from that. We haven't talked about it in a while.
The NBA has done a good job of bearing the story.
I haven't seen Darryl Morey all year. He's normally does
a news converence, he pops up on radio shows. I
haven't seen the guy since that whole rhubarb took place,
the general manager of the Rockets. But we are talking about,
according to the people who know, hundreds of millions, if
(24:42):
not a billion dollars plus in revenue that has Presto
vanished from the coffers of the NBA, all because Darryl
Morey endorsed Hong Kong, right picked the right side Hong
Kong rather than a oppressive government in China, and so
(25:03):
they went with Hong Kong. And that because of that,
a lot of NBA business in China dried up. Some
of it has come back, I understand, but not all
of it. And so essentially the chickens are going to
come home to roost when the bean counters look at
the books. So that means that the salary numbers are
going to go down. Now, they likely will not go
(25:24):
down all that much, that's true, but that's a way
that Anthony Davis gonna lose a little bit of money.
There's also the fact that he's very fragile, very fragile.
We saw I got hurt last night. He's got a
bad tailbone. He's got that going for him, and he
is much more likely to have a catastrophic injury than
(25:44):
he is to make it through the rest of the
season healthy. And why am I saying that? What is
my evidence? Well, look at his injury chart. It's four
pages long. I think he's actually five pages long. And
he heard his tailbone, like we said last night, thirty
point over the Knicks gets an MRI today. The results
(26:04):
will come out. He's already done for the road trip
the Lake. I love Lakers again. They're saying, oh, he's fine,
everything's good. By the way, he's not going to play
on the road. And in addition, we're going to have
an MRI, which costs thousands of dollars to have an MRI.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
(26:26):
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Major
League Baseball pitchers and catchers report to spring training in
a little over a month, talking about like I think
it's February twelfth or something like that. Pictures and catchers
report crazy. It's absolutely crazy. So now we have known
for a while that the Houston Astros are dirty, rotten cheaters,
(26:51):
dirty dolls of baseball. They were caught red handed banging
on trash cans, and now they have some company in
the penalty box of baseball. If you've not heard, Dark
Day for the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are
the latest major League team to be involved in a
sign stealing scandal that has rocked baseball to its court. Now,
(27:15):
what did the Red Sox do? What did they do?
The Red Sox are accused of using the video replay
room to steal opponent's signs during the twenty eighteen World
Series winning season. You know who the Red Sox beat
in the twenty eighteen World Series. Yeah, this comes to
(27:37):
us from Kenna Rosenthal and Evan Drelik of the Athletic.
Now I know Evan, I work with him at the
other radio station in Boston back in like January, February
of last year, March and April, and then that was
about it. But Evan's it's very interesting that he's the
(27:57):
guy that's got the story because he was a Red
Sox beat reporter and before that he was an Astros
beat reporter. The two teams that have been outed by
the Astro by the Athletic are the Astros in the
Red Sox. So how do they do this? So apparently
the Red Sox, if you believe the story, they sent
players to the video replay room, which is right near
the dugout to study signs and relay information back to
(28:21):
the other players on the team. Now they claim they
have three sources and this went on during the twenty
eighteen season. Now that they claim that it's this is
not unusual, but Major League Baseball attempted to crack down
on it before the twenty eighteen season. They sent out
memos for beating players from using the video replay room
(28:42):
and steal signs. Of course, who reads those memos. So
the Red Sox then passed the signs on to each
other and had a grand old time cheating, cheating, cheating, cheating, cheating.
So let's discuss the question, what do you make of
the Red Sox being tossed in to this particular the story.
It had been an Astros story all along, and now
(29:03):
we have the Red Sox. So I've got common denominator,
rationalize and apple those three things and we will connect
everything together. Now, first of all, this is as shocking
is learning a child does not like eating vegetables. That
the Red Sox are involved, this, that other teams are involved.
(29:24):
Now the Red Sox are going to be punished by
me Baseball. They've got to be punished. But the DNA
on this, the Astros DNA is all over it. The
tentacles of the astros elaborate cheating scandal have spilled in
to the hallowed grounds of Finnway Park. Alex Cora is
(29:45):
obviously the direct link and he was aj Hinch's right
hand man during the twenty seventeen Houston playoff run that
was fueled by depravity and debauchery, as we have come
to learn. And then Alex Cora leaves the Astros, gets
the Red Sox job and brings the dirty tricks with
(30:07):
him to the Commonwealth, the same things he used deep
in the heart attacks is Alex Cora is the common denominator.
But he learned, I think from aj Hinch. Remember what A. J.
Hinch said. Remember what he had to say back in
the playoffs last year for the Astros when asked about
(30:28):
the Astros cheating. What did he say? You know what
nobody heard of. You guys have audio video, people, people
in places and nothing and there's no evidence of anything.
So there are hundreds of videos that have popped up
of the Astros doing this. No evians, that's the guy
(30:50):
that Alex Cora worked with. So now, to his credit,
though Alice Cora evolved the cheating of the Astros, the
Red Sox were more cloak and dagger, not as in
your face as the tactics used by the Astros Houston.
For those of you that have been in a closet
somewhere in a shoe box. Houston has been using all
(31:12):
kinds of tells to their players, for example, bang bang whistles,
band aid buzzers, earpieces with communication. Imagine that you're on
the road. You know, the helmet with the flaps over
the ears so you can't see an inside of ears,
(31:33):
and some sound of the ass. That's an Astro's Rangers
game last year. That's Astro's Mariners. That's right, that's how
that went there. So all this went down. So again
the laundry list that used garbage cans, bang bang whistles,
bandaid buzzers, earpieces, flashing lights, that's a pyrotechnic show. Now
Boston is accused of a more modest, a more understated
(31:58):
cheating scheme. Typically, player who stole the signs would then
walked back to the dugout to inform their teammate. Right now,
once a runner got on base, they would pass along
the signs based on the position of the base. Now
how would they do this, Well, this is where it
gets interesting. The runner would let the hitter know if
(32:20):
he was aware of the sequence, he would put like
two feet on the bag or look out into center
field or do something very subtle and nobody seemed to notice.
According to the one of the Red Sox sources for
this story, the runners stepping off the bag with the
right foot first could mean fastball, left foot first, a
(32:43):
breaking ball, or an off speed pitch. But it's the
same concept of what the Astros did. Now. Red Sox
hitters reportedly discussed in their pregame meetings how they were
planning to cheat for that night's game, what they were
going to do, what methods they were going to use
in that game. Now, by itself, I'm gonna be an
(33:03):
adult here. I have no problem with sign stealing, But
the fact that you have taken it to the next
level with the technology, all right, dad, means it's not
a misdemeanor, it's a felony. And even one of the
former Red Sox players, of course, didn't give their name,
not like Mike Fires, who gave his name, said, hey,
(33:25):
it's cheating. Person that was with the Red Sox when
they won the World Series said, because if you're using
a camera to zoom in on a crotch of a catcher,
about that zooming mean on the crotch of the catcher
to break down the sign? System and then take that
information to give it out to the runner. Then he
doesn't have to steal it because you've already stolen it.
(33:48):
You see how that works. Now. The second thing here,
as we talk here on Fox Sports Radio, this sign
stealing epidemic is obviously widespread. It's not just the Astros,
it's the Red Sox, there are other teams involved. But
it reminds me of the steroid controversy in the early
(34:09):
two thousands. Now, I might or might not have been
doing talk radio in those days, but the Astros you
remember listening to talk radio. The people who are around
the Astros and the Red Sox mostly the Astros, the apologist,
the defenders, the mouthpieces for the Astros. They are using
the same defense that I remember the people that supported
(34:30):
Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa did back in
that day. You know what their defense is? Yeah, but
everyone does that. That's the defense. So they're trying to
rationalize that that's not that big a deal because everyone
does it. But everyone does. So let's examine that. Now,
(34:52):
would the defense strategy in a court of law stand
up if the Astros were put on trial and defense
was but everybody does that. The answer, no chance in hell.
Now what is my evidence that that would not stand up.
It has been used by hardened criminals and respected members
(35:16):
of the community that step into it. And each time
someone uses that defense, but everybody does that, it's rejected
almost universally. You know. It's kind of like I talk
about spirit of law versus letter of the law. Everyone
speeds at night, you know, on the highway, everyone's going
faster than the speed limit, but certain people get tickets.
(35:39):
But if you if I got a speeding ticket, and
I think they should just if you're going with the
flow of traffic and you're not driving dangerously, you should
be allowed to go over the speed limb if you're
going with the flow traffic. But as you go to
court and I say, listen, I was going, you know,
ninety miles an hour. Everyone was going ninety miles an hour,
you know, And I used the defense, but everybody does that,
(36:00):
still gonna give me the ticket. I'm not getting out
of the ticket anyway. So Houston fans are using that
to rationalize it doesn't work right. Each time, it's rejected
almost universally, and in the legal world, they ask, how
could you possibly believe that an act is right simply
because everyone else he's doing. It's kind of like that argument,
(36:22):
though you know your parents told you he shouldn't do drugs.
You shouldn't do bad stuff in here everyone, even if
everyone else is doing it, you've got to not do it,
and then you end up doing bad stuff anyway. And
that's how that works. So how can Major League Baseball
crack down on sign stealing? Let me get to that
in a minute. I got final thought though, if this
(36:44):
report is true, what should Baseball do with the Red Sox? Well, really,
the fall guy in all this is gonna be Alex Cora. Now,
the Red Sox will be punished, and I believe they
will be fined, And if it turns out they did
this throughout the playoffs in the world, they should forfeit
the twenty eighteen World Series. Give it back, Give it
(37:06):
back now. Fair is fair, It will be gotten gains.
Alice Cora should be given the Pete Rose treatment and
banned for life. The Dodgers are gonna have to schedule
back to back World Series parades back to back, gonna
break the budget in Los Angeles to the city budget
(37:28):
there with these parades, what do youny Thursday? This Thursday
and then next Thursday? All right? Said, yes, why not?
I wouldn't be shocked if the Nationals did something illegal.
How about back to back to back World champions for
the Dodgers? Yes, all right? So how can Major League
(37:52):
Baseball crack down on sign stealing? I'm a problem solving
That's what I am. My theory is the only way
to stop this kind of cheating is to fight technology
with technology. Now what do I mean by that? Take
the signs out of baseball? Major League Baseball needs to
partner with Apple and have players and catchers alike. Pitchers, catchers,
(38:16):
players wear air pods. Why not. I'm not going to
injure yourself with an air pod. This goes on in football.
We see this in football, right quarterback has a system
to communicate with the sidelines, with the coaching staff, and
they have about fifteen seconds or twenty secs or whatever
(38:36):
it is to get to play in right here, the
Seahawks game, and one of the coaches is telling Russell Wilson,
here's the play we're gonna run. There's no signs. You
can't steal any signs. So if you did this, now this,
and that would pretty much eliminate stealing signs. Now it
would be possible. The only way to steal a sign
(38:58):
would be if you're either a psychic or a hacker
like a North Korean hacker, and you hack into the
communication system. But the only problem with this plan is
that infielders. Everyone's gonna have to be wearing the AirPods
because the infielders need to look at the where the
pitch is going so they know where to line up.
(39:21):
So that becomes a little bit of an issue. But
that is my solution for baseball. And again we are
told by the end of January, Major League Baseball is
going to issue long suspensions banishments for the Astros before
Super Bowl Sunday. Now, knowing how Baseball operates, they might
(39:44):
just wait till Super Bowl Sunday. So nobody talks about it,
but that's what's going on. Fox Sports Radio has the
best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of
our shows at foxsports Radio dot com and within the
iHeartRadio app search f s R to listen live.
Thanks for listening to the best of the Ben Mallers
Show podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight
from two to six Eastern eleven pm to three am
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and to find your local
station for the Ben Mallers Show at Fox Sports Radio
dot Com. You can find it there or stream us
live every night on the iHeartRadio app by searching FSR.
(00:23):
This is the best of the Ben Maller Show on
Fox Sports Radio. So we have the NFL coaching carousel,
which I believe right now is spinning out of control.
Two more vacancies have been filled. We'll focus for the
purposes of this Maller monologue on the one in the
Tar Hills State. And I assume you saw it happened
(00:45):
early in the day. Maybe you missed it. The Carolina
Panthers have hired who Yeah, if you were in another
dimension and you've been out of the loop, Matt Rule,
he rules the day. He's a new Matt Rule. He's
a coach of Baylor, and he also he also in
(01:09):
accomplishing a couple of things. He became an NFL coach,
and he also remade a Hollywood classic, The Great Train
Robbery by Matt Rule, who has no NFL head coaching
experience but very briefly was a assistant position coach in
the NFL, and he gets a reported seven year contract
worth sixty million, which with incentives, could be worth up
(01:33):
to seventy million dollars. Holy bo Jangles, Batman, what is
up with that? Anyway? Let's discuss the question, how should
Carolina Panther supporters, all of them listening to us in
Charlotte right now, how should you feel and all over
the Carolina's feel about Matt Rule as your coach. Now,
(01:54):
I've got risky business, characters and pie and we will
buying all these things together. Now. Number one, I find
I believe the word is interesting. Now. We were asked
the other day in Mallard of the third degree whether
or not Matt Rule would return to Baylor for another season,
(02:15):
and at that time we said, absolutely, he's not going
to the NFL. He's gonna do these interviews, but these
are not great jobs. They're not. And part of that
was because he had a massive buyout and the Panther's
job is at best average, is not a plum job
in the NFL. Well, it turns out that it became
(02:37):
a plum job because the hedge fund guy that owns
the Panthers, that Weasley Wall Street guy, David Temper, what
David Temper wants as the owner, who David Temper gets.
That's the reality. Now, it does help to be worth
twelve billion dollars. That is his said net worth. Think
(03:01):
about that, twelve billion, not million. Twelve billion, which means
means you're living in a nice part of town and
you have cash to burn. You have cash to burn,
kind of like writing a check for six million dollars,
which is what the Carolina Panthers have done. They wrote
a check for six million dollars to Baylor and said,
here go out. I think you can buy half of Waco,
(03:23):
Texas for six million dollars. But that is what they
got as a compensation situation. Hey, it's only money, chump change.
In fact, when you're worth twelve billion dollars, it is
a massive gamble. Though typically you'd say for both sides,
but on this one, it's a big gamble for Carolina.
It's the old risk Rewar right Matt rule. For him. Hey,
(03:44):
he was the hot name. You only get to be
the hot name one time. Very rarely do you be.
I mean he almost like, once in a blue moon,
are you a the hot guy for more than one time?
And he picked up panthers. Not a great job. It
became a great job when the dollar amount was thrown around.
(04:04):
How do you make an average job a great job? Overpay,
any job becomes a better Whatever you're doing right now,
a lot of people listening live work and even the
podcast you're working while you're doing this, and you might
not like your job. I hear from people all the time, Matt,
I don't really like it. I gotta do it. I
got you know, I get a zillion kids, I got bills,
(04:25):
I got a you know, a whole thing. I get
emails from people all the time. They spilled their guts.
And here's the thing. That same job you're doing right now,
if they tripled your salary, would not be such a
bad job. You'd be like, that's a pretty good job.
I like this job. I can embrace this job. The
hours might be tough, but so what anyway. So that's
the thing for Rule. If you're talking about a seven
(04:46):
year contract. You know that old saying strike while the
iron's hot, Well, Matt, Rule struck while the iron was hot.
And even if he does a face plan and sucks
at a time you should not, you know, suck, coaching
in the NFL care line will pretty much be married
to him and connected at the hip for at least
four years plus. If he fails, and most of these
(05:09):
coaches fail, he can go back to college Matt rule
and his tail between his legs and his bank account
filled with money. It is risky business for David Tepper
because he is putting his neck out there on what
is a wild card, and it could be a joker,
it could be an ace. Right, there are justifiable red flags.
(05:30):
This is a guy who's claimed to fame is the
resurrection of woebegone schools like Temple and Baylor from sin
to salvation. Right now, news flash, you're not in Waco,
Texas anymore. Right, you're not in Waco, Texas anymore. So.
The NFL is whole different animal, not Charlotte. It's not
(05:51):
a massive media center and all that. But every NFL
town they have their lapdog media. Probably, Oh, I guess
Buffalo's got the biggest lapdog media. I heard from my
friends Sports with Coleman this week. But but every town
has some guys that are critics, and by the way,
we have our made for TV moment one of them.
In the NFL twenty twenty, we don't have the schedule out,
(06:12):
but we know the matchups and Matt Rule and the
Carolina Panthers will play his predecessor, Ron Rivera and the
Washington Redskins in Land over Maryland. So that'll be I
think Monday night Thursday night games something like that, some
primetime festivities. Now. Secondly, Carolina, they certainly regressed under Ron Rivera,
(06:35):
the aforementioned Ron Rivera, things had become stale. So from
the standpoint of change, pretty much anybody would be good.
Ron Rivera, let's just say the roster. Now, he wasn't
fully involved in building the roster, but he had a
roll in it. He the roster that Rivera left. The
cupboard is bare in many areas. Now they have Christian
(06:56):
McCaffrey on offense, and they've got Louke Keickley the line
backer on defense. But outside of that there's a hodgepodge
of non descript players. I don't see very many playmakers,
if any other than Christian McCaffrey regularly performing there. And now, personally,
I like the Matt Rule hire for Caroline ain't my money.
(07:18):
And I like the excitement. I mean, I would say,
of the hires that we've had in the NFL, this
one is right there at the top of the list.
And he could fail, and it's still at the top
of this We're all playing the speculation game. You're all gambling,
all of us that this is gonna work out. And
(07:39):
I don't know too much about him. I saw some games.
I don't see him when he's coaching Temple, but at Baylor,
And how could you not be impressed with a turnaround
of Baylor? In fact? How good has this guy? Ben?
He's critically acclaimed. This past year, the Baylor Bears became
the fourth team, but the first Power Five team since
nineteen thirty seven to win eleven games two years after
(08:02):
losing eleven games. That is a dramatical turnaround situation. And
I also liked the backstory, which gets shoved up your
nose in times like this, Like the path he took
coach and playing football, Matt Rule included some very interesting
(08:22):
and infamous football characters who were his mentors, and now
he's an NFL coach. Matt Rule was a walk on
at Penn's State and guess who the coach was, Joe Paterno.
But he also played defense, and his defensive coordinator in
State College was the notorious pervert Jerry Sandusky. That's right,
(08:47):
the guy who was molesting little boys. Jerry Sandusky was
his defensive coordinator and the new coach of the Carolina Panthers.
Matt Rule's father worked for Jerry Sandusky's charity in State College.
I assume they did not put that in the press release.
Now that doesn't mean anything at all. It just you
people work with people, and sometimes you don't know the
(09:10):
real story on people. And they've got two sides and
all that. I get it. But it's interesting. Are these
are interesting names? Now? The final point, if you do
the old winners and losers thing, we don't have a
winner yet. Because of all I like to hire because
it's exciting, it's new, it's fresh, and all that. We
do have a loser. That would be the New York
Football Giants. All right. This is a big blow to
(09:32):
Big Blue because Matt Rule grew up in New York
before he moved to Pennsylvania as a teenager. He was
an offensive line coach assistant offensive line coach for the
Giants on the Tom Coughlin. It was all lined up.
All the anecdotal evidence led you to believe that he
was going to be the next coach of the Giants.
The media in New York were convinced of it. Instead,
(09:55):
he decided not to even talk with him and take
the money and run with Caroline. I don't blame him.
Giants aren't going to pay that kind of money. How
about low self esteem for Dave Gettlman and the Giants
eating humble Pie and boone appetite and all that. Now
they were backed into a corner. They ended up hiring
Joe Judge, the Special Team's coach or the Patriots. More
(10:18):
on that later. So Matt Rule, Joe Judge is the
guy's name. So Matt Rule immediately becomes one of the
highest pay coaches in the NFL. Right rags to riches,
the whole deal. He moves into the high rent district.
As the thinking goes, he is I believe richer now
than Scrooge McDuck. I believe he is richer than Scrooge McDuck.
(10:40):
And he's also in the running for the worst dress
coach in the NFL. Now, Bill Belichick and Andy Reid
kind of go back and forth on that. But I
don't know if you've you watched him at Baylor. One
of the few things I remember, that's how odd how
I remember these weird things watching Baylor a few times
over the last couple of years, that Matt Rule dresses
like he's doing overnight talk radio. You know, we do
(11:02):
the overnight show here, so there's no one in the building.
Management's not around. They don't even clean the toilets while
we're here. There's nobody in the building, so we can
pretty much wear our pajamas if we wanted to. No,
I dress her success. I'm wearing a tuxedo right now.
But these other guys are dressed like clowns. I want
you to know that. But Mad Rules seems like a
meat and potatoes kind of guy that's not worried about
(11:23):
strutting down the catwalk. Now, he's no fashion east considering
some of the crap that he's worn. But you know,
who am I to speak? Who? Well, I'm a talk
sture host. I get paid to speak. That's how that works.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven PM Pacific. There
is no joy in Mudville or lebron Land Brownie, that's
(11:45):
his kid, actually Lebron the old man. As the world turns.
The Lakers put a beat down on the Knickerbockers. But
that's not the story. The story is a boo boo
for Anthony Davis. Who could have possibly anticipated that Anthony
(12:05):
Davis would get hurt. It's so unlike him. He's an
iron man. When you think tough, you think Anthony Davis.
Next man up. That's the attitude, next man up mentality.
Ha ha. This DeMarcus cousin is gonna come back and
(12:29):
place hurt. He's out for the year, right, and he's
gonna come back and save the day for the Lakers. Well,
if you missed it, now, there's two things about Anthony
Davis that we need to talk about. He left the
game in the third quarter last night or tonight, depending
on how you look at it. It is the middle
of the night so or early in the morning now,
so it was last night Laker Nick's game, blowout game,
(12:51):
third quarter. And oh a collision between Anthony Davis and
former Aco Julius Randall. Ironically, they were like united as
one there for a little while, but they got together.
Now Anthony Davis left the game. He walked off under
(13:13):
his own power. The Lakers owner, general manager, President of
basketball Operations, Rich Paul Lebron's toady and also the agent
for it's all. It's you know, it's everyone's in bed
with everyone here in the Laker Land. But to Anthony
Davis's agent came over and it wasn't some pr person,
(13:34):
it was Rich Paul himself that said, there's nothing to
see here. Everything is fine, is essentially what he said.
It's like that famous, famous scene in one of the
great movies of all time from back in the day,
Leslie Nielsen and the Naked Gun, the late Leslie Nielsen,
(13:56):
when he's standing there and he says, you know, there's
he He's actually had two lines in movies that are
the Naked Gun. He was standing in front of like
a building with fireworks going off and all this because
and he said, move on, there's nothing to see here,
please disperse. And another old movie that has been many
years ago, but airplane. Remember remember the line Leslie Nielsen
(14:18):
had an airplane. He said, there's no reason to become alarmed,
and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight.
By the way, is there anyone on board who knows
how to fly a plane? Solid line, solid comedy, gold
in the movies. But so Rich Paul's like, oh, there's
nothing to see here, don't worry about it. He'll be fine.
(14:39):
That's he says that out of one side of his mouth.
Then it comes out that not only is Anthony Davis injured,
he's gonna miss the upcoming road trip for the Lakers.
So he's out for the roadie. He will not play
in those games. And but wait, there's more. He's gonna
have an MRI on his lower back. Inquiring minds would
(15:03):
like to know how this is gonna go. I'd be
surprised if we see him again before February, knowing his
injury record. And then you have the future of Anthony Davis.
I don't know if you've heard the latest on that.
No bad job you. We're gonna get to that in
a minute. Let's you're from Frank Vogel, though, who tried
(15:25):
to help tow the company line here the la he's
not really the Lakers coach. He's Lebron's assistant, the lead
assistant for the Lakers. Frank Vogel commenting on the injury
to Anthony Davis a tailbone injury in this while diagnosis
of bruce tailbone and he's gonna go through additional testing
tonight and we'll have an update for you tomorrow. It's
all I got. That's it. I want more, I need more. No,
(15:50):
apparently that's always gone. So as far as the contract, though,
the Lakers offered Anthony Davis a four year, one hundred
forty six million dollars extension that happened on Tuesday, was
reported on Tuesday, and the Lakers were handed by Anthony
Davis this is great a rejection letter hours before he
(16:10):
went out and mutilated his tailbone. He turned down one
hundred and forty six million dollars and then immediately got hurt. Immediately,
don't even pass go you have picked up a tailbone injury.
Davis is bypassing the end season extension and he would
like to become an unrestricted free agent in July. Now,
(16:33):
there's several schools of thought on this, so I thought
we would take a spin and figure out what's really
going on the question how nervous should the Lakers be
about Anthony Davis leaving he just turned down one hundred
and forty six million dollars. I am going to pull
out the Mallard scale of anxiety, and on the Mallard
(16:54):
scale of anxiety one to ten, with ten being you're
staring down the barrel of a flamethrower. I'm out a night.
I am at a crazy eight. I know the guys
in the other room there, the Laker apologists don't want
to hear that, but I'm at an eight. All right.
I've got superficial, deep dish and collateral damage, and we'll
(17:16):
put all these things together. Not to lead off with
Anthony Davis has been, for the most part, a good soldier.
He is saying and doing just about all the right things.
Per media reports, he appears to be bff with Lebron James.
They're hanging out together, smoking cigars, They're having Taco Tuesday together.
Oh my god, they're having so much fun. Every day
(17:38):
is a trip to Disneyland with these two knuckleheads side
by side. And Anthony Davis on the court has been
very productive. The team is winning. He seems genuinely happy
to play for the Lakers, YadA, YadA, YadA. However, much
like the Laker franchise motto. It's all superficial. You have
(18:00):
to take this stuff at face value. It is irrelevant. Now,
what is my evidence? Example A Kawhi Leonard and Uncle Dennis.
That is example A. Remember Kawhi was laughing and having
a good time winning in Toronto and the Raptors, thanks
(18:21):
to the Warriors crumbling, won the NBA championship. Kawhi Leonard
seemed genuinely happy. He was more popular than the Prime
Minister of Canada. They were giving him deals. He was
hanging out making TV commercials and big deal, big deal
in Toronto and all over Cannon. At first, you always
(18:44):
remember your first that first championship for the Raptors franchise.
And so why would he leave? But boardman rejected max
offers from the Toronto Raptors. He exited stage right in
free agency. Now, furthermore, Anthony Davis, he has a similar
circumstance around him. Now. The only difference here, and it's
a mildly big difference, is that he wanted to play
(19:06):
for the Lakers, and this is where he chose to
escape from New Orleans. Kawhi didn't pick Toronto. He ended
up in Toronto. However, Laker historians ought to be skittish
and nervous because while Kawhi Leonard chose to play for
his hometown team, it's hip to clip, you know, the
(19:28):
hometown team for Anthony Davis, the running of the Bulls.
That's right, the Chicago Bulls, the Unit brow a native
son of Chicago. The Bulls have been a slow motion
train wreck for years, and I feel bad for my
friend Chuck Swirsky, the voice of the Chicago Bulls there
(19:49):
who's had to call some terrible Bulls teams over the
recent years there, radio voice of the Bulls. You're a
schmuck if you don't know who Chuck Sworsky's. He created
the nickname Eric Canada and Vinceanity when he was the
voice of the Toronto Raptors back in the day. Very
very nice man, very talented man, the great Chuck Sworsky.
But anyway, I digress. So Chicago like the Bulls because
(20:11):
they've been so bad. You imagine Davis could just be
the perfect tonic, just what the doctor ordered, right walks
back into the Windy City. He'd be bigger than Deep
Dish Pizza in Chicago if he were to do that,
as the guy that would fix the Bulls. And you
know his friends from back home in Chicago, if he
(20:33):
has any of them left from the second city, there
have to be planting the scene in his ear like, hey,
come on, maby, we need you. You'd be the savior,
the messiah of the Chicago Bulls franchise. Anthony Davis. Now
on a positive note for the Laker Lapdogs. Rich Paul,
who we referenced earlier the de facto owner of the
(20:55):
Lakers and general manager and president, and also Anthony Davis
is agent. He is the one who, in theory, is
orchestrating the very future of the unit. Brow or, as
our friend the Palm Desert Rat said, instead of the brow,
it's just the owl. That's it. I'm gonna have to use.
That's a good line. I'm gonna steal that eventually. I
(21:15):
will not give you credit, Palm Desert Rat. I'll just
use that as my own. I learned that from Tom Looney,
who I used to work with here, because I would
say something the first hour of a show. We did
the blitz and it was like like six or seven
hours whatever it was, and so I'd say something kind
of witty that worked the first hour, and then three
hours later, he Looney would use the same line, and
(21:38):
then he would turn his mic off and laugh at
me and point his finger at me like a child.
So I will do the same thing with the palm,
does it rat? I will say, he's not the brow,
He's the owl. And then I will just laugh and
I will turn my mic off and goof on the
palm desert. Right, That's what I'm gonna do. Let you
know right now. But Rich Paul, you're the Rich Paul
dynamic is the orchestrator of the future of Anthony Davis.
(22:03):
Imagine Paul and Lebron James. I would think are putting
a full court press on Davis, hoping to hypnotize him,
to brainwash him with Laker propaganda, mine control. And we
know Anthony Davis. You know he's a good basketball player.
But he didn't even dress himself. I mean, it's all embarrassing.
I remember the whole New Orleans thing. He wore the
(22:24):
T shirt the last game in New Orleans where didn't
even play that said that's all folks, and then when
asked about it, so I didn't even know. I don't
dress myself. You know. It's like his mom puts his clothes,
not even his mom. It's said one of his handlers
puts the clothes on the bed for him to wear
in the morning. Imagine that. I mean, at some point,
don't you I pick out my own clothes. I look great.
By the way, thank you. Thanks for her nosing all
(22:45):
right now, the last thing here, so reports say Anthony Davis.
The reason he rejected the Lakers max offer is to
get more money by waiting until the summer. And the
way the salaries work this well, I can get two
hundred million if you ways, it gets one hundred and
forty six million. Now it's an extra couple of million
a year. Not so fast though. All right, there's a curveball,
(23:08):
a backdoor curveball, which, by the way, Los Angeles Dodger
hitters do not know how to react to in the postseason,
but they're fine during the regime. Anyway, Sorry, I'm having flashbacks,
but a reality check, Anthony Davis could actually end up
costing himself money. There's two ways this can go sideways
and upside down and topsy turvy for Anthony Davis. And
(23:33):
the first way is the salary cap, which has gone up, up,
up and away for years keeps getting higher every year,
revenues get better. The party bus is about to run
out of gas. A long time NBA employee told me
on Christmas night, I was the Laker Clipper game and
(23:54):
was it the chickern press room or whatever hell it is,
and he sat with me, he talked to me, told
me that it is going to be a very ugly
offseason in the NBA and there's going to be a
market correction in terms of revenue. Now, why is it
that is collateral damage from the NBA doing the dirty
(24:18):
dance with the People's Republic of China and the fallout
from that. We haven't talked about it in a while.
The NBA has done a good job of bearing the story.
I haven't seen Darryl Morey all year. He's normally does
a news converence, he pops up on radio shows. I
haven't seen the guy since that whole rhubarb took place,
the general manager of the Rockets. But we are talking about,
according to the people who know, hundreds of millions, if
(24:42):
not a billion dollars plus in revenue that has Presto
vanished from the coffers of the NBA, all because Darryl
Morey endorsed Hong Kong, right picked the right side Hong
Kong rather than a oppressive government in China, and so
(25:03):
they went with Hong Kong. And that because of that,
a lot of NBA business in China dried up. Some
of it has come back, I understand, but not all
of it. And so essentially the chickens are going to
come home to roost when the bean counters look at
the books. So that means that the salary numbers are
going to go down. Now, they likely will not go
(25:24):
down all that much, that's true, but that's a way
that Anthony Davis gonna lose a little bit of money.
There's also the fact that he's very fragile, very fragile.
We saw I got hurt last night. He's got a
bad tailbone. He's got that going for him, and he
is much more likely to have a catastrophic injury than
(25:44):
he is to make it through the rest of the
season healthy. And why am I saying that? What is
my evidence? Well, look at his injury chart. It's four
pages long. I think he's actually five pages long. And
he heard his tailbone, like we said last night, thirty
point over the Knicks gets an MRI today. The results
(26:04):
will come out. He's already done for the road trip
the Lake. I love Lakers again. They're saying, oh, he's fine,
everything's good. By the way, he's not going to play
on the road. And in addition, we're going to have
an MRI, which costs thousands of dollars to have an MRI.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
(26:26):
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Major
League Baseball pitchers and catchers report to spring training in
a little over a month, talking about like I think
it's February twelfth or something like that. Pictures and catchers
report crazy. It's absolutely crazy. So now we have known
for a while that the Houston Astros are dirty, rotten cheaters,
(26:51):
dirty dolls of baseball. They were caught red handed banging
on trash cans, and now they have some company in
the penalty box of baseball. If you've not heard, Dark
Day for the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are
the latest major League team to be involved in a
sign stealing scandal that has rocked baseball to its court. Now,
(27:15):
what did the Red Sox do? What did they do?
The Red Sox are accused of using the video replay
room to steal opponent's signs during the twenty eighteen World
Series winning season. You know who the Red Sox beat
in the twenty eighteen World Series. Yeah, this comes to
(27:37):
us from Kenna Rosenthal and Evan Drelik of the Athletic.
Now I know Evan, I work with him at the
other radio station in Boston back in like January, February
of last year, March and April, and then that was
about it. But Evan's it's very interesting that he's the
(27:57):
guy that's got the story because he was a Red
Sox beat reporter and before that he was an Astros
beat reporter. The two teams that have been outed by
the Astro by the Athletic are the Astros in the
Red Sox. So how do they do this? So apparently
the Red Sox, if you believe the story, they sent
players to the video replay room, which is right near
the dugout to study signs and relay information back to
(28:21):
the other players on the team. Now they claim they
have three sources and this went on during the twenty
eighteen season. Now that they claim that it's this is
not unusual, but Major League Baseball attempted to crack down
on it before the twenty eighteen season. They sent out
memos for beating players from using the video replay room
(28:42):
and steal signs. Of course, who reads those memos. So
the Red Sox then passed the signs on to each
other and had a grand old time cheating, cheating, cheating, cheating, cheating.
So let's discuss the question, what do you make of
the Red Sox being tossed in to this particular the story.
It had been an Astros story all along, and now
(29:03):
we have the Red Sox. So I've got common denominator,
rationalize and apple those three things and we will connect
everything together. Now, first of all, this is as shocking
is learning a child does not like eating vegetables. That
the Red Sox are involved, this, that other teams are involved.
(29:24):
Now the Red Sox are going to be punished by
me Baseball. They've got to be punished. But the DNA
on this, the Astros DNA is all over it. The
tentacles of the astros elaborate cheating scandal have spilled in
to the hallowed grounds of Finnway Park. Alex Cora is
(29:45):
obviously the direct link and he was aj Hinch's right
hand man during the twenty seventeen Houston playoff run that
was fueled by depravity and debauchery, as we have come
to learn. And then Alex Cora leaves the Astros, gets
the Red Sox job and brings the dirty tricks with
(30:07):
him to the Commonwealth, the same things he used deep
in the heart attacks is Alex Cora is the common denominator.
But he learned, I think from aj Hinch. Remember what A. J.
Hinch said. Remember what he had to say back in
the playoffs last year for the Astros when asked about
(30:28):
the Astros cheating. What did he say? You know what
nobody heard of. You guys have audio video, people, people
in places and nothing and there's no evidence of anything.
So there are hundreds of videos that have popped up
of the Astros doing this. No evians, that's the guy
(30:50):
that Alex Cora worked with. So now, to his credit,
though Alice Cora evolved the cheating of the Astros, the
Red Sox were more cloak and dagger, not as in
your face as the tactics used by the Astros Houston.
For those of you that have been in a closet
somewhere in a shoe box. Houston has been using all
(31:12):
kinds of tells to their players, for example, bang bang whistles,
band aid buzzers, earpieces with communication. Imagine that you're on
the road. You know, the helmet with the flaps over
the ears so you can't see an inside of ears,
(31:33):
and some sound of the ass. That's an Astro's Rangers
game last year. That's Astro's Mariners. That's right, that's how
that went there. So all this went down. So again
the laundry list that used garbage cans, bang bang whistles,
bandaid buzzers, earpieces, flashing lights, that's a pyrotechnic show. Now
Boston is accused of a more modest, a more understated
(31:58):
cheating scheme. Typically, player who stole the signs would then
walked back to the dugout to inform their teammate. Right now,
once a runner got on base, they would pass along
the signs based on the position of the base. Now
how would they do this, Well, this is where it
gets interesting. The runner would let the hitter know if
(32:20):
he was aware of the sequence, he would put like
two feet on the bag or look out into center
field or do something very subtle and nobody seemed to notice.
According to the one of the Red Sox sources for
this story, the runners stepping off the bag with the
right foot first could mean fastball, left foot first, a
(32:43):
breaking ball, or an off speed pitch. But it's the
same concept of what the Astros did. Now. Red Sox
hitters reportedly discussed in their pregame meetings how they were
planning to cheat for that night's game, what they were
going to do, what methods they were going to use
in that game. Now, by itself, I'm gonna be an
(33:03):
adult here. I have no problem with sign stealing, But
the fact that you have taken it to the next
level with the technology, all right, dad, means it's not
a misdemeanor, it's a felony. And even one of the
former Red Sox players, of course, didn't give their name,
not like Mike Fires, who gave his name, said, hey,
(33:25):
it's cheating. Person that was with the Red Sox when
they won the World Series said, because if you're using
a camera to zoom in on a crotch of a catcher,
about that zooming mean on the crotch of the catcher
to break down the sign? System and then take that
information to give it out to the runner. Then he
doesn't have to steal it because you've already stolen it.
(33:48):
You see how that works. Now. The second thing here,
as we talk here on Fox Sports Radio, this sign
stealing epidemic is obviously widespread. It's not just the Astros,
it's the Red Sox, there are other teams involved. But
it reminds me of the steroid controversy in the early
(34:09):
two thousands. Now, I might or might not have been
doing talk radio in those days, but the Astros you
remember listening to talk radio. The people who are around
the Astros and the Red Sox mostly the Astros, the apologist,
the defenders, the mouthpieces for the Astros. They are using
the same defense that I remember the people that supported
(34:30):
Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa did back in
that day. You know what their defense is? Yeah, but
everyone does that. That's the defense. So they're trying to
rationalize that that's not that big a deal because everyone
does it. But everyone does. So let's examine that. Now,
(34:52):
would the defense strategy in a court of law stand
up if the Astros were put on trial and defense
was but everybody does that. The answer, no chance in hell.
Now what is my evidence that that would not stand up.
It has been used by hardened criminals and respected members
(35:16):
of the community that step into it. And each time
someone uses that defense, but everybody does that, it's rejected
almost universally. You know. It's kind of like I talk
about spirit of law versus letter of the law. Everyone
speeds at night, you know, on the highway, everyone's going
faster than the speed limit, but certain people get tickets.
(35:39):
But if you if I got a speeding ticket, and
I think they should just if you're going with the
flow of traffic and you're not driving dangerously, you should
be allowed to go over the speed limb if you're
going with the flow traffic. But as you go to
court and I say, listen, I was going, you know,
ninety miles an hour. Everyone was going ninety miles an hour,
you know, And I used the defense, but everybody does that,
(36:00):
still gonna give me the ticket. I'm not getting out
of the ticket anyway. So Houston fans are using that
to rationalize it doesn't work right. Each time, it's rejected
almost universally, and in the legal world, they ask, how
could you possibly believe that an act is right simply
because everyone else he's doing. It's kind of like that argument,
(36:22):
though you know your parents told you he shouldn't do drugs.
You shouldn't do bad stuff in here everyone, even if
everyone else is doing it, you've got to not do it,
and then you end up doing bad stuff anyway. And
that's how that works. So how can Major League Baseball
crack down on sign stealing? Let me get to that
in a minute. I got final thought though, if this
(36:44):
report is true, what should Baseball do with the Red Sox? Well, really,
the fall guy in all this is gonna be Alex Cora. Now,
the Red Sox will be punished, and I believe they
will be fined, And if it turns out they did
this throughout the playoffs in the world, they should forfeit
the twenty eighteen World Series. Give it back, Give it
(37:06):
back now. Fair is fair, It will be gotten gains.
Alice Cora should be given the Pete Rose treatment and
banned for life. The Dodgers are gonna have to schedule
back to back World Series parades back to back, gonna
break the budget in Los Angeles to the city budget
(37:28):
there with these parades, what do youny Thursday? This Thursday
and then next Thursday? All right? Said, yes, why not?
I wouldn't be shocked if the Nationals did something illegal.
How about back to back to back World champions for
the Dodgers? Yes, all right? So how can Major League
(37:52):
Baseball crack down on sign stealing? I'm a problem solving
That's what I am. My theory is the only way
to stop this kind of cheating is to fight technology
with technology. Now what do I mean by that? Take
the signs out of baseball? Major League Baseball needs to
partner with Apple and have players and catchers alike. Pitchers, catchers,
(38:16):
players wear air pods. Why not. I'm not going to
injure yourself with an air pod. This goes on in football.
We see this in football, right quarterback has a system
to communicate with the sidelines, with the coaching staff, and
they have about fifteen seconds or twenty secs or whatever
(38:36):
it is to get to play in right here, the
Seahawks game, and one of the coaches is telling Russell Wilson,
here's the play we're gonna run. There's no signs. You
can't steal any signs. So if you did this, now this,
and that would pretty much eliminate stealing signs. Now it
would be possible. The only way to steal a sign
(38:58):
would be if you're either a psychic or a hacker
like a North Korean hacker, and you hack into the
communication system. But the only problem with this plan is
that infielders. Everyone's gonna have to be wearing the AirPods
because the infielders need to look at the where the
pitch is going so they know where to line up.
(39:21):
So that becomes a little bit of an issue. But
that is my solution for baseball. And again we are
told by the end of January, Major League Baseball is
going to issue long suspensions banishments for the Astros before
Super Bowl Sunday. Now, knowing how Baseball operates, they might
(39:44):
just wait till Super Bowl Sunday. So nobody talks about it,
but that's what's going on. Fox Sports Radio has the
best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of
our shows at foxsports Radio dot com and within the
iHeartRadio app search f s R to listen live.
Host
Ben Maller
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